


Doomed to Obscurity: Interlude the Second

by BluePhoenix73



Series: Doomed to Obscurity [4]
Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Backstory, Canon Backstory, F/M, Minor Character Death, Zanarkand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-13
Updated: 2017-07-13
Packaged: 2018-12-01 11:36:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11485587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BluePhoenix73/pseuds/BluePhoenix73
Summary: (Part 4 of 5) Set immediately after the conclusion of "Doomed to Obscurity, Part II." With the help of Sin, Auron arrives in Zanarkand, determined to keep his promise to Jecht. For ten years, he watches over Jecht's son, until the night of a certain blitzball game...





	Doomed to Obscurity: Interlude the Second

The creature before me nodded. Its flesh looked off somehow: it was a deep, graying teal, its hair a kind of off-white, as if something dark had possessed it.

“How is… how are… _what?_ ” I questioned, unsure what to make of the image of Braska’s Final Aeon standing before me. It offered one of its hands to me and beckoned me toward it. Warily, I boarded his hand, whereupon he enclosed me in a loose fist and we began moving very quickly.

As we traveled, I felt my mind start to go fuzzy, and I squeezed my eyes shut.

 _Sin’s toxin?_ I wondered. _But… how is that possible?_ An image appeared before my closed eyes, of the end of the battle I had sat in Macalania Woods listening to. It was Braska’s Final Aeon, standing in the middle of the Calm Lands, before the body of Sin. Then, as the great beast was dissipating into a giant cloud of pyreflies, something rose out of it and flew into the aeon. The aeon—Jecht—grabbed his head and roared in pain before his coloring changed, to the odd teal and white that I had seen a moment ago. As if pushed by some unseen force, Jecht was propelled over the edge of the cliff that I had stood on seconds before, and I found myself back in that same place, looking down over the edge of the cliff at the waves lapping at the jagged rocks at its base. Behind me, I heard a gruff voice speak, and turned in response to it.

“It’s the spiral of death,” Jecht, in his human form, said, sitting cross-legged on the grass. “‘The aeon that defeats Sin becomes it in its place.’ That’s what Yunalesca said. I’m… becoming Sin, Auron.”

“And your plan?” I asked. “To break the cycle?”

He stood up and walked over to me. “Auron, when he’s ready, bring my son here, to Spira.”

“And how do I do that?”

“The Zanarkand I’m from…” he began. “It’s a dream. _I’m_ a dream. The fayth, and all the people who died in the battle between Bevelle and Zanarkand all those years ago… they keep the dream alive.”

I shot him a confused look. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Not sure I do, either,” he said, shaking his head. “All I know is that I want my son to come to Spira. I might not be entirely sure about what I’m gonna do yet, but I know he can help us break the cycle. I… I have faith in that kid, and besides, it’ll be… good for him, you know?”

“I’ll bring him,” I replied. “But how am I to do that?”

“The same way you’re going to Zanarkand,” Jecht said, flashing his trademark smirk. “I’ll come from Spira when you call me, across the never-ending sea. I’ll tell you when he’s ready.”

“But—”

“We’re there,” Jecht said. He grabbed my hand and shook it. “Good luck, Auron.”

Everything went white, and then the image of a boy and his mother flashed before my eyes. That too faded into nothingness, and the next thing I knew, I was waking up with people crowded around me.

“Is he all right?”

“Where did he come from?”

“Look at that scar! Was he attacked?”

I shook my head and stood up, looking through my one eye at all the people around me. They were standing on a circular platform over water, the same sea I figured I had just crossed with the next Sin. Toward the front of the crowd, I spotted the woman and child from the image I had seen just before I found myself on the platform. I figured I must have seen them for a reason. I walked over to them.

“Are you the family of Jecht?” I asked.

“Wh-what?” the woman stuttered. “Y-yes, we are—”

“I have some news for you,” I said. “Is there a place we can talk in private?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “We’ll go back to our home. Come on, Tidus.”

The boy with shaggy blond hair, not unlike his mother’s, followed close behind her as she led me back to her home. It was small, but cozy. She showed me inside and sat me down on a sofa.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked. “Mr…”

“Call me Auron,” I said. “And no, nothing at the moment.”

She sat down next to me as the boy she had called Tidus played with a blitzball across the room.

“Forgive me for sounding so urgent,” I said after a moment of careful thought. “I didn’t even ask your name. I apologize.”

“It’s fine,” she assured me. “My name is Alana, and my son is Tidus. Do you…” she paused as though she was not quite sure she wanted to know the answer to the question she was about to ask. “Do you have news about Jecht?”

“Jecht is…” I hesitated. I couldn’t tell her the truth without causing her to throw me out on the streets and call me a lunatic. Then again, how could I tell her that he was dead? It would destroy her. “How has the search effort been going?”

She shook her head sadly. “Not well. They’ve searched the seas, all over the city… it seems as if he just vanished.”

“I worked at the stadium,” I lied, trying as best I could to remember Jecht’s stories of his Zanarkand. “I knew Jecht well.”

“Funny, he never mentioned you before… maybe I just wasn’t listening,” she said. “I’m sorry, I interrupted you. Please, go on.”

“I just found out he’d gone missing,” I continued. “I don’t hear very much from others, and since they let me go a week ago, I haven’t heard from him either. I figured he’d want me to come and keep you and the boy company. He mentioned you a lot.”

“He did?” Alana’s eyes shone with tears of mixed emotions.

“All the time, wherever we went,” I nodded.

She hung her head, a tear falling into her lap. “Jecht…”

“Mommy!” Tidus called.

“One moment, dear,” she replied, looking over at him briefly before returning her attention to me. “Is there anything I can do to help the search? Anything at all?”

I looked over at Tidus. “Take care of him. He needs it.”

She sighed deeply as a knock sounded at the door. Tidus stopped playing with the blitzball and hugged it to his chest as Alana and I rose from our seats. She opened the door, coming face to face with a man clad in strange clothes. He wore a badge on his vest, and his helmet was emblazoned with a symbol that I assumed signified that he was part of some kind of police squadron.

“Hello Alana,” he said. “I am Bardolf, captain of the Zanarkand Regional Guard. I’ve come to inform you that the local search parties have retired—”

“No, please, you can’t stop!” Alana protested.

“But it’s been nearly a day already,” he replied. I noticed that Tidus had walked silently to my side as the man continued to speak. “They are weary from the search, my good lady. They’re only stopping for the night.”

“Perhaps you could go look for us,” Alana suggested.

“People are searching for him now,” Bardolf replied before shooting her a sympathetic look. “A task force has been assigned to monitor the shoreline throughout the night. The local parties will resume their searches tomorrow.” Bardolf walked away.

“Thank you,” she said, folding her hands and raising them to her chest, bowing her head slightly. The few people standing at the end of the bridge leading to the platform on which Alana and Tidus’ house stood began to disperse, and Tidus threw down the blitzball and ran outside, his back to his mother. The people stopped and turned to look at him.

“Tidus?” she said, looking over at him. “What is it, dear?”

He turned to face her. “Who cares whether he comes back or not?” he asked angrily.

“But he might die!” Alana exclaimed, crouching before her son.

“Fine, let him!”

“Do you… do you hate him so?”

Tidus nodded determinedly.

“If he dies, you’ll never be able to tell him how much you hate him,” she said, her voice stronger than before. “So keep looking with me.”

“Hmph,” he grunted, turning and running off into the city.

I joined Alana on the platform. “Is it safe for him to go off like that?”

“He’s just going to the stadium,” she sighed. “It’s where he always goes when he gets like this.”

“Mm,” I nodded, watching the boy run without looking back. “Do you… do you think he would mind if I followed him?”

“He probably won’t listen to a thing you have to say,” she replied, smiling sadly. “He never does.  He’s just like his father that way.”

“I will return,” I promised, crossing the bridge and walking toward the city. I traveled slowly, taking in the brightly lit streets and buildings.

“Wow,” I breathed. “Zanarkand, the machina city. I’m really here.” I spotted a large dome that could only belong to a sphere stadium somewhere off to my right, and followed the road that seemed to lead toward it.

 

* * *

 

When I finally reached the stadium, I found Tidus kicking around a blitzball by one of the locker rooms.

“Hey there,” I said. He cast a quick, cold glance at me before refocusing his attention on the blitzball.

“We didn’t really get to introduce ourselves earlier,” I tried again. “My name is Auron.”

“Tidus,” he replied shortly.

I wandered a little closer to him. “You have pretty good form there.”

“Thanks.”

“Did Jecht teach you?”

He kicked the ball with more force, and it hit the wall with a resounding smack before bouncing away.

“This might not be any of my business,” I began cautiously, “but what makes you hate him like you do?”

He turned to face me. His posture communicated anger, but his sky blue eyes reflected hurt and sadness.

“He was a drunk,” he stated. “Whatever I tried, he always told me I couldn’t do it. He was…” he looked away. “I hated it. I hate _him_.”

“Sure looks like you can do it to me,” I shrugged.

His eyes lit up. “Really?”

I nodded. “I’m sure Jecht would be very proud of how far you’ve come.”

He closed his eyes. “Thanks, I guess.”

I turned to leave.

“Auron?”

I looked back at him. “Yes?”

“Are you… gonna stick around a while?”

I chuckled and headed for the road. “Don’t be out too late, boy. You’ll worry your mother.”

 

* * *

 

In exchange for my help with the search efforts, Bardolf and Alana put me up in a room in the most extravagant inn I had ever laid eyes on—it was nothing like what we had in Spira. As the days passed, even the national search parties thinned out, and Alana was losing hope. Each time I saw her, she looked paler and thinner than the time before. I helped to take care of Tidus as she sat inside her home, going without food or slumber. I spoke to one of her neighbors, an elderly woman who remembered Jecht and Alana’s relationship well. She told me that it was as though Alana was a lovebird who had given up on living since the loss of her mate, despite needing to take care of her son.

I knew the feeling all too well. Watching her deteriorate reminded me of my own struggles, though they were so long ago… and of leaving my own mate yet again, after my death in the Calm Lands.

One day when I approached the house, I saw Tidus outside, playing alone. Alana was nowhere in sight. Usually she was watching him, at least. I sensed something was very wrong.

I hesitated for a moment. What if Alana were to die? Would that leave me to raise Tidus in order to fulfill my promise to Jecht? I had failed so spectacularly as a parent the last time I tried, I couldn’t…

I approached the boy cautiously. “Hello.”

“What do _you_ want?” Tidus’ look said it all: Alana was _definitely_ unwell.

“Your mom… is she all right?”

“Why should you care?”

“If she dies, I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“Don’t say Mom is gonna die!”

I nodded. “My apologies.”

I left him standing there, on the platform in front of his house. I felt sorry for the poor kid. His mother was going to die, and soon… and then what?

 

* * *

 

Not 24 hours later, Alana had slipped into a deep sleep, and died there. Tidus sobbed as they took her body away. What was left of the search for Jecht was officially called off. Tidus inherited the house, and for ten years, I helped take care of him, along with some of the other players of the Zanarkand Abes, his next door neighbors, and Alana’s friends from around the city. I would occasionally make a voyage out to the edge of the dark sea to greet Jecht, his appearance different, more evil, every time I saw him, and update him on Tidus. It was always the same: I’d ask if Jecht thought he was ready, and Jecht would shake his head. I became accustomed to this, and the thought that I might never return to Spira crossed my mind. Yuna would have been safely escorted to Besaid, and once Tidus had lived his glory days and didn’t need me anymore, I could “die” here, and return to the Farplane with Anya. It would have been a good life. I thought that that would be my fate… until one day, just short of ten years after I had come to Jecht’s Zanarkand.

It was the night of the final match of the Jecht Memorial Cup between the Abes and the Duggles, and I had promised Tidus that this would be a game he wouldn’t forget. Just two years after the start of his blitzball career, at the age of eighteen, he had become the Abes’ star player: the title that once belonged to his father. A building in the middle of the city was adorned with a projection of Jecht, smiling, in memoriam. Everyone was going to be there.

Just before I left my hotel room to head to the stadium, I saw a flash of light in the distance, and noticed that the waves lapping up against the shoreline had become slightly larger, and irregular.

Jecht had arrived.

I took a boat out to the edge of the water, as I’d done many times before, and looked up at the massive monster that was my friend… the massive monster that was Sin.

“Tonight’s an important night, Jecht,” I said as I felt my mind go fuzzy from the overwhelming toxin.

 _“I know,”_ his gruff voice echoed through my head. _“But tonight’s the night, Auron. Tonight, you bring my boy to Spira.”_

“I shall retrieve him then,” I said. “But what about his blitzball game?”

 _“Let me handle that one,”_ Jecht replied, a smirk in his tone. _“Just get to the city. Get your stuff. Signal me when you’re ready.”_

I nodded, and with just a twitch of a fin, Sin sent me rocketing back toward the Zanarkand docks. I secured the boat and looked around the city. After grabbing my pack, I climbed the stairs of my hotel all the way to the roof, and stepped out onto one of the horizontal rods that adorned it. I raised my hand up to signal Jecht, and before me, beneath a dome of water, Jecht—Sin—swam toward Zanarkand. Water splashed into the nearby streets as he looked around.

Knowing Sin would cushion my landing, I jumped off the building. Because of Sin’s own kind of gravitational pull, I was eased gently to the ground. I walked through the puddles of water as Sin followed behind me, everything around it being drawn toward it in the process. Seeing the tsunami-sized wave, people fled before me as I walked toward the stadium.

Sin then attacked, shooting bullets of light from within his watery cloak, taking down statues and buildings, and even obliterating the sphere stadium. People were running every which way now, and screaming drowned out everything except the sound of Zanarkand’s destruction.

I rushed to the entrance of the ruined stadium, finding Tidus there. I made sure I had everything I needed with me one last time as I waited for him to get up. When eventually he did, he noticed me, and ran over to me.

“Auron! What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for you,” I replied, walking away.

“What are you talking about?” he asked, running after me.

He must have lost me in the crowd, because he staggered around looking for me. A moment later, everything froze, and I stood stock still. A young boy I recognized as Bahamut’s fayth appeared before Tidus, and said something that made him look utterly confused. With a flash of light, he disappeared, and once again chaos raged in Zanarkand. He turned around, shaking his head and scouring the running figures for me.

“Hey, wait!” He ran over to me, opposite the fleeing people. “Hey, not this way!”

I looked over my shoulder as he stood before me, panting. “Look.”

He followed my gaze, then gasped and stumbled backwards. High in the sky, the great sphere of water containing Sin levitated above the city.

“We called it ‘Sin,’” I said.

“‘Sin?’”

Just then, a giant sinspawn burst from the side of one of the taller buildings. It was an arm full of scaled tentacles, all wriggling about against the sky. The central tentacle shivered violently, then shot hundreds of its scales out and onto the road, in front of us and behind us.

 _So you’re training him up already, are you, Jecht?_ I thought, amused.

The scales erupted into bug-like creatures with glowing wings, easily six feet tall. They lunged at us, daring us to attack them. Tidus began swinging at them wildly with his arms. I smiled to myself as he fell backward—he was going to need some help.

“Take it,” I said, pulling Jecht’s old sword from my pack and handing it to the boy. Tidus held it high in the air, but as soon as I let go of it, he stumbled over, barely able to hold it. “A gift from Jecht,” I continued, hoping it would inspire some confidence—or perhaps some rebellious spirit—in him.

“My old man?”

One of the creatures lunged at him.

I shouldered my own blade. “I hope you know how to use it.”

We proceeded to cut through the scale creatures easily, running ahead until more blocked our path.

“These ones don’t matter,” I called. “We cut through!”

After another round of scales, we found ourselves completely surrounded by the creatures, in front and behind. Out of the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Tidus looking nervously all around him. He jumped a little when he heard me speak:

“Don’t bother going after all of them. Cut the ones that matter and run!”

Fortunately, he excelled at following directions, though that might only have been because he was panicked.

Once the scales were clear, I ran ahead toward a smaller version of the tentacle sticking out of the building that was blocking our path to Jecht—to _Sin_. Tidus hesitated, but followed me after a moment, approaching the beast with his blade drawn.

“Get outta my town!” he yelled.

“Some can’t wait to die!” I said, eyeing the scale creatures flanking the tentacle. I jumped into the air and plunged my sword into the ground, using its power—my power—to send a line of explosions through the sinspawn. Tidus looked impressed. The battle continued, and the boy even tried a move of his own, cartwheeling up to the tentacle and striking it with the sword. A bit showy, perhaps, but effective enough. I allowed him to strike the final blow, and we continued forward.

We passed the screen with a visage of Jecht on it and some message about this being the “Jecht Memorial Cup.” What a time to interrupt. I heard Tidus mutter behind me:

“What’re you laughing at, old man?”

Jecht did look amused. He _would_ be amused.

“Auron! Let’s get out of here!”

“We’re expected.”

“Huh?”

I smirked and kept running toward Sin. I could practically hear Tidus roll his eyes.

“Gimme a break, man!”

After encountering innumerable sinscales—so many that we had to knock down a piece of malfunctioning machina to blow them up—we jumped to a crumbling bridge. Tidus dangled there, not quite making it.

He would learn soon that while discretion might be the better part of valor, hesitation would not do him many favors in Spira.

“Auron!” Tidus called, Sin drawing the bridge up toward it. “Auron!”

I could feel my thoughts grow fuzzy. Jecht wanted to talk. I looked back up toward Sin.

“You are sure?”

 _“Yeah,”_ I heard Jecht’s voice reverberated through my head, almost too loud to handle. _“He might cry, but he’s ready. You know what to do.”_

I pulled a struggling Tidus up by his shirt. “This is it. This is your story. It all begins here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! :) As before, let me know if you see anything that looks like it could use a touch-up or correction.
> 
> Again, this would have been much, *much* harder to piece together without the help of [this fantastic FFX game script](http://auronlu.istad.org/ffx-script/). I'm so glad it exists to help ambitious writers like myself.


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